West Wing Season 8

Did you know that when the West Wing writers were looking for a candidate to base Matt Santos on, they went for a young politician – not even a senator yet?

For what those West Wing fans stunned by the similarity between the fictitious Matthew Santos and the real-life Barack Obama have not known is that the resemblance is no coincidence. When the West Wing scriptwriters first devised their fictitious presidential candidate in the late summer of 2004, they modelled him in part on a young Illinois politician – not yet even a US senator – by the name of Barack Obama.

But it doesn’t end there. The model for Josh Lyman was, apparently, a man I’d never heard of called Rahm Emanuel. Who is apparently the model for Lyman. And he’s been tipped to be Obama’s chief of staff, which is what Lyman ended up as.